3. Rational design and synthetic biology

3.1 The contribution of computer science to life science engineering

While engineering existed long before computers, it was primarily based on drawing, calculation and models. The development of computing from the 1980s onwards brought with it the development of computer-aided design (CAD) technologies and in-silico system simulations. A similar development followed in biology, where bioinformatics took on an increasingly important role, providing biologists with gigantic databases of information and tools for designing and modeling natural and artificial biological systems.

The first thing to do is to list the databases. These have made it possible to compile the state of genomic (NCBI